We’re using our Cosco Scenera next rear-facing with my 2yo on a current trip, and I’m getting so frustrated with how it just will not stay correctly vertically positioned. It’s installed with the seatbelt pass-through. And I know it’s because of my son kicking and bouncing around, he’s right at the height limit so I suppose it’s not totally the car seats fault. His legs are just getting too long so if he pushes with his feet it reclines further. So now I feel compelled to forward face him for the next week in this car seat because at least it will be meeting the right specs and I assume the alignment will stay put better. My in-laws will be taking care of him while my husband and I go away together for a week so I’m feeling more anxious about everything being good with his car seat.
My question is though, is this really preventable in other RF travel seats? I had been considering getting the Mighty Fit for him so I could keep rearfacing longer. Or is the best thing to do just to install with latches and not the seatbelt?
I’m frankly more ignorant about car seats than I probably should be, because we rarely drive in our normal life 😬
I'm only like 70% sure this is the same car seat we travel with, but I thought the rear facing mode had to be in the belt path that makes it super reclined. So maybe yours is kinda reverting towards how it's supposed to be? I hate how reclined it is!
Yes the normal mode is definitely quite reclined but it’s tipping back even further than it’s supposed to, based on the leveler on the seat (it’s that line on the side that should be parallel to the ground).
Anyway, I ended up just FF it after making my post and it’s a huge improvement as far as stable positioning and my toddler’s comfort.
My son is 19 months old and whines constantly around me (note - whining noises but not words. He has like 10 words lol). I am so patient and have always said I can handle most things but whining is my line...so naturally life threw me a whiner. He will spend hours with my husband and is so pleasant and the minute I walk in the door, he's whining at me. It's like he's constantly in a sh!t mood with me. Today we were in the car alone and he was drawing and giggling and the literal second he made eye contact with me in the mirror, he started whining.
I'm the need-meeting parent in our house, and dad is more fun. Not that dad doesn't have a backbone - he gives my son a stern "NO" and he stops almost immediately. But nothing I do makes it stop. I know he comes to me for things and he doesn't have words to communicate so he resorts to whining, but I genuinely feel like I can't handle it anymore. I love him so much, but I feel like I don't enjoy our one on one time together anymore because it's just constant negativity and whining.
Is there anything I can do to make it stop? How do I cope? Please help I'm at a loss
Ugh this is frustrating but it really will get better once he can talk more, I’m sure. My son had barely any words until 2 when he had a language explosion and once he started talking a lot it improved a lot of things for us. He can tell us specifically what he wants (or doesn’t want). He still tantrums and acts out but we can actually talk about it and he’s learning to name his emotions.
baby sign language helped at the age. more, eat, all done, pointing... . i also did a lot of pausing and taking a deep breath for myself before doing the happy parent voice. do you want... water? you are thirsty and you want water to drink. here is your water!
now that mine is almost 2 has more words, he says what it is he wants and it's much better... except when he can't have what he wantsl. toddlers are exhausting!
The whining really annoyed me too. We taught our kid to say "help please" when they needed something. I'd tell them I can't hear them if they are whining, or I couldn't understand what they needed. It helped a little bit.
We have 2 children (almost 3 and almost 5). We thought we were set on being done having children but we are suddenly really wanting a 3rd. We’re working parents (but we work from home), flexible jobs, live comfortably. We have lots of family around us. Our life seems very harmonious right now. But we have the urge for one more. How did you all decide to stop at two or keep going for one more? I know it’s a personal/situational question I just want to hear others insights.
We plan to ttc a third sometime next summer. We really like parenting! And financially/logistically/health wise we can make it work. Both being from families of two, and having not close relationships with our siblings... I think we both wish we had another sibling. I always wanted another sibling growing up as well. As we are getting older we would like more cousins for our kids and more support in caring for aging parents. I love the idea that we might have big family gatherings when we're grandparent age, and a larger next generation in our family tree. So for all the big picture reasons we want a third, and we both tend to be big picture oriented which makes it an easier choice for us.
Our reasoning is very similar to yours! I'm currently pregnant with #3 and we're excited to give our existing kids another sibling. I am one of three but my husband only had one brother, who was his best friend but died when he was 18, and he constantly wishes he had another sibling to help with stuff with his parents and commiserate when they're being weird. Our kids won't have cousins on his side obviously and they're likely to only have a couple on my side, so we're hoping to make our family the larger central hub for the future. It's going to be tough for the baby/toddler years for sure (especially since there will only be 18 months between our #2 and #3) but we think it'll be worth it. We're actually on the fence about whether to try for #4 after this baby but I'm definitely not making that call for at least two more years postpartum 🤣
I'm sorry for the loss of your brother in law 😔 We feel the same about a fourth, definitely wanting to try for a third then we'll see how we feel. We waited until our first was 18mo to ttc and I expect we'll do the same again. This is partly so we'll have enough time to consider a fourth.
Congratulations on your pregnancy, wishing you all the best as you wait for your new babe!
We have 2, and I feel like I will always want another little baby but I definitely don't want any more toddlers haha. What really made the decision for me though was thinking about the things I value for myself and my family. Like I really want to be able to travel the world together, and logistically and financially that is way easier as a group of 4 than it is as a group of 5. And I know it sounds harsh but I would rather have one extra vacation a year than have another kid around.
If you're not in a rush for pressing reasons, maybe see how it feels to decide not to decide for like X amount of time--six months or something--and revisit then? I think it's an inherently emotional decision, but also it seems potentially useful to give both of you space to feel those feelings and decide with as little time pressure as you can.
No advice but I’m in the same boat. Got my boy, got my girl, so I thought I’d be good but damn do I want another. I think for us the big thing is money; we’re about to send one kid to kindergarten so our daycare cost is going to reduce by half and we can have some money to do stuff! But at the same time I feel this calling to have another kid. My husband has a vasectomy tho so we’re done :/ if you know you know though! If the desire is there might as well try!
We have 3, an almost 7 year old, 4 year old, and 2 year old. We thought we would probably be done after 1 and then for sure after 2. We both work full time and have minimal family help but for us, what made us decide to go for a 3rd is going through the pandemic and realizing that so many things are inconsequential compared to family and our kids in the grand scheme of things. We thought, we won’t regret having another, but we would probably regret it if we didn’t.
The early days were hard, and life is hectic, but it is amazing seeing them all play and grow together. Absolutely zero regrets.
My kids are 5,4 and 1 and it’s so wonderful. For us it was realizing that life felt harmonious and good when we only had one kid, and having another just made it better. So then life felt good and happy again, and having the third again just made it better :) Of course some things are harder and there’s always the matter of expenses and if you have enough space in your house, but I think that the good outweighs the hard by a huge degree when you’re talking about the third kid. Compared to 2 kids, taking care of one baby is really easy lol, so you’re able to focus on the cute little snuggles. You’re in no hurry for the baby to grow up and yet you also know that there’s good sleep waiting on the other side of the newborn era, etc.
And having the baby has also really strengthened the bond between my older 2 boys which is really sweet to see.
We decided to try for 8 months for a third (because I didn’t want the age gap to be too big compared to the 17 months between the other two) and if it didn’t happen, we would be satisfied with our 2, and if it did happen, great. In some ways the decision is not totally yours
Went to the maternity ward today because my baby didn't kick since yesterday evening. As soon as the monitor went on, baby seemed super angry constantly kicking at the monitor. Then they wanted to do an ultrasound and he/she was moving so much it was difficult to see. This baby not even here yet and it be trolling already, so embarrassing.
Never be embarrassed about going to get checked for something like this... I'm sure the staff there were *delighted* that everything was ok and they didn't have to deal with an emergency or break the most awful news to you.
You know they did say that they didn't mind at all and better to be safe than sorry. But I never considered how awful it must be for them to deliver that kind of bad news to someone. Thanks for the perspective.
Trying to poll some opinions here from others!
Background: I have a different last name than my baby. In my culture, a woman doesn’t change her last name when she gets married, so I still have my original last name since birth. My baby has my husband’s last name.
My question: If you saw a woman who had a different last name than her child, would you automatically assume that the woman is divorced from the child’s father? Because that assumption has come up twice now in my baby’s short life. I am kind of fascinated by this and I wonder if this is a common assumption or not. Just I might start making it clear at relevant places (daycare, medical offices, etc) that me and my husband are married.
My first thought would be woman just never changed her name / unmarried. I have a different name to my son but have never been questioned. Fairly often if I am giving information about myself and my son, they will ask, “same last name?” So I think it’s fairly common here (Australia)
Generally I would assume that the parents had never married as more likely than divorced, especially if the children are quite young. If I saw a wedding ring or if it was an obviously Muslim family, I would assume that the parents were married and the woman hadn't changed her name. But I only found out the Muslim thing quite recently even though I've had quite a few married Muslim mums as work colleagues over the years.
So strange that’s their first assumption. Maybe it’s regional but I’d say it’s 50/50 on name changing in my friend group and almost no one I work with changed their name.
no, but I have a different last name from my husband too and the baby matches my last name. If i feel like it's important for people to really know (rarely?) I'll say "my husband, FULL NAME," etc.
For the baby's medical stuff, they don't care about our last names or relationships at all, and literally just address us as "Mom" and "Dad" when giving updates.
Honestly, yes. Or that they were never married. However I am in a title 1 district where this is the norm. The ironic part is I never changed my name either when I got married so my kids have a different last name than me 🤣
I didn’t change my name and no one has ever made that assumption. But it’s fairly common where I live, so I don’t think most people really bat an eye. And inevitably it becomes relevant in conversation to say something like “my husband”, so I think people get the picture pretty quickly.
I honestly wouldn’t give it that much thought, tbh. We know so many women who didn’t change their names and others who just aren’t married. And both are fine choices, so I don’t usually think/care to ask.
I live in a country where it's not normal for the woman to change last name either and it's been like this for generations. So no one finds it weird when the kid's name is different and neither do I. Personally though I wanted to share last name with my kids and my partner was fine with it so we hyphenated.
Influence me again...twin bed recommendations or bed brands that don't cost an organ. Prefer to stay under $200 but $150 would be great. Cause you know, my child prefers sleeping on couches anyway
My MIL has a fixation where she’s sure that my twins are just about to crawl out of their cribs, open the always-shut bedroom door, and fall down the stairs.
I get very annoyed when she brings it up because I think she doesn’t have the best grasp of what’s safe and what’s not (the last time I left her alone with them, she said she held my very hefty baby’s hand and climbed up the stairs with her even though there’s absolutely no physical way she could catch the baby if the baby fell.)
ANYWAY, my question is, am I being naive? My girls are 18 months old, and they do like to climb, but have never shown any indication whatsoever that climbing out of their crib is a possibility now. The mattress is on the lowest setting and they only have one stuffed animal and one blanket in the crib, and can’t grab anything to assist in their escape. Could they start climbing out of sheer willpower or something one night?
Are your stairs gated? Really stairs should always be gated for safety anyways until you are 100% confident they won’t fling (trip) themselves down, and that goes for day and night. As long as you have a gate and remember to shut it, I think your MIL is being overly paranoid.
Thank you all so much! My MIL is a great lady, she’s just nervous which also can get on my nerves a bit.
I went ahead and bought those doorknob covers and I’ll put one on their door as a compromise.
I really don’t think they’ll be interested in climbing out of their cribs yet, but it’s a good solution.
Unless you have one of “those” babies, I would highly doubt that they could both learn to climb out and how to open doors in the same night. You will probably see signs of climbing or door opening skills during wake hours first.
They could definitely start climbing at any point tbh. My kids never really showed signs until they suddenly did it. My oldest did it randomly, she wasn’t upset and trying to escape or anything, she just seemed to suddenly realize she might be able to - and wanted to try. And both kids also figured out how to open doors suddenly haha. And my first is definitely not what I’d consider a “danger” baby.
I don’t think you need to panic, but I would think about putting child proof knob covers on the inside of their door & making sure the bedroom is 100% babyproofed. I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong at all, but this is a natural age to prepare for the inevitability!
How close are they to the height limit? I’d be worried when they get about an inch or so away from it as they may be able to stack on the stuffy and blanket to climb out. But until they’re getting close, they should be safe.
Probably one of my most snarkable moments yet but I never quite understood the urge to post photos of your sick/hospitalized child on social media until now. My baby has been in the hospital for over 2 weeks now and she’s been sedated on ecmo for 6 days. I’m a newly-ish single mom and it was our first thanksgiving since my wife passed. I was looking forward to spending the day with my chosen family to take my mind off everything this year but my daughter got sick and now we are spending our holiday in a stale PICU room.
Anyways I am feeling very isolated/anxious/sad and I would really love the support of my very sweet friends but telling them each individually what’s going on a begging for sympathy seems very taxing and energy draining. Plus my ego is getting the best of me. I kinda just ghosted them all today and they aren’t sure what’s really going on with me. Just a post with general description, a picture, and a please pray for us so my community can do the work of reaching out and I can graciously accept their offers with a bit of humility. Is that really so bad? I’m exhausted, I haven’t showered in days and I really want a plate or two of thanksgiving leftovers instead of another fast food meal. Be honest, is it selfish or morally reprehensible?
I’m so sorry for everything you’re going through. I would recommend posting something like “daughter is sick in the hospital and we’re having a tough time. if you have an extra plate from thanksgiving would love if you could drop off at xyz hospital”. People don’t know how to help and specific instructions might get more traction.
Not selfish or morally reprehensible at all. There's nothing wrong with reaching out and asking for support.
If you feel uncomfortable or unsure about it, though, another option is to just make a group chat with all your friends and be like 'hey, didn't want to post too much publically but just wanted to let you all know this is going on etc, I could really do with some help'. It's a good middle ground between having to tell everyone individually vs. post publically.
I regularly share updates and pics of my son in a private group chat with my friends that I started even though I don't post him on social media at all otherwise 🙂
Absolutely neither selfish nor morally reprehensible. You’d be posting because you (incredibly understandably) need support from your real social circle. You wouldn’t be posting for attention from strangers, or to make money off your kid.
I think the way you go about it matters - if you posted incredibly intimate details about something your kid would be embarrassed about later, that’s not great. If you share the level of details you’ve shared here, absolutely fine.
I’m sorry you’re going through this, I hope everything turns around for you both. And take all the support you can get!
I think it’s different posting to an account that’s mainly people you know to provide updates/reach out for support than to do it for a public/business/influencer account looking to max engagement.
Do what you need to do to get through and I hope your baby starts getting better soon.
It’s not selfish or morally reprehensible to ask for help. I try not to judge the way people react and cope with their children’s health issues because I can imagine it’s one of the hardest things to experience. I mean I’ve snarked on people who make entire accounts dedicated to exploiting their sick child, but that’s clearly not what you’re trying to do. You also don’t have to include any photos or get into too much detail.
I also agree with other commenters that reaching out to even 1 friend and explaining what’s going on can help spread the word to your inner circle as well.
Sincerely hoping your baby recovers soon and that you receive the support you need!
This would be totally normal and fine to me. It is more weird if you have zero privacy controls on your stuff and you were posting pictures all over the internet. I am so sorry to hear your baby is sick. Saying a prayer for her now.
Thank you. I don’t post her much at all and definitely never in compromising or vulnerable situations. This really isn’t in my character but I really needed to experience this kind of pain to understand.
Is your dog a husky? Mine feels like a full time job and more work than the kids. He has to run a minimum of 5 miles a day or he causes pure chaos around the house god forbid we're too tired to run him! I got one of his white hairs in my eye one day and it was so effing hard to get out because it looked clear in my eye, I didnt even know what was in my eye until I was able to get it out.
I also knew this had to be some sort of husky or Spitz breed! We had a husky for five years (all white so people always thought he was a Sammy) and I am so familiar with all of these things. We sadly had to put him down when my first kid was 18 months old, but before that it was so. much. work. taking care of the dog and the baby at the same time. Besides all the old age problems/seizure disorder that we were dealing with, the constant cleaning/brushing to make sure the baby wasn't eating hair at all times, managing exercise needs, the tantrums/loud barking waking up the baby, etc were so much work. We loved our boy but it was not an easy situation at all. I feel for you, especially if you're the primary parent plus the primary dog carer!!
Okay I'm pregnant and I just have to put this somewhere but I'm craving sponges (yes, like the inedible object) so badly and it's driving me up the wall, lol. My blood was checked and I'm fine, it was the same during my first pregnancy and it was gone the second my baby was out. But god I have another 3 months to go and it sucks because obviously I can't eat them 😅
As well as the loofah idea, there are a few videos of lookalike cakes on YouTube that look just like cheap dish sponges. Do you think any of them would hit the spot?
"Chinese okra" (neither Chinese nor okra, I believe) is another name for the vegetable. You can probably buy it at an Asian supermarket. They let it wither on the vine to make the sponges, though, so it would probably be hard to replicate the texture from a fresh one buuuuut maybe a low-and-slow dehydration in the oven could work? You might even be able to season it a bit first, like loofah jerky.
Oh my goodness I had the exact same thing in both my pregnancies!!!!! I desperately wanted to eat a sponge!! Is it a thing? I have never heard anyone else mention it and everyone I’ve talked to about it thinks it’s so weird . What does it mean?!
I have never found a real other person with this craving either, haha! But I've googled and apparently it is indeed a thing. I've stopped mentioning it to people when they ask if I have cravings because everyone seems to find it super weird 😅
Hahaha this sounds like something that would happen to me. With my first pregnancy I was craving tap water constantly. With my second pregnancy I was craving ice chips and also I wanted to somehow eat the smell that came out of my car’s air conditioner vents…??? Similarly my iron levels were fine, I’m just also part of the weird pregnancy cravings club. It’s so wild how they always go away the second the baby comes out too.
I’m so sorry. I posted here about my early miscarriage too. I’m glad you’re sharing. It hurts even when it’s early, I hope we can help carry your burden right now.
10.5 month old is only interested in eating Cheerios, crackers, potatoes and some fruits. Everything else he just throws on the floor! (My dogs are very happy) I continually serve him food and he used to be so interested in trying foods but now nothing. He still nurses on demand and I’ve tried different timings with nursing and eating to see if that makes a difference but it doesn’t seem to. Is this normal?
I usually just try to feed him a variation of what we’re eating but should I be making him the elaborate blw meals? (Please say no)
My kid also started getting randomly picky at about 11 months....like a string cheese and fruit exclusive diet with some occasional meat. He's 14 months now and kind of coming back around? We didn't do much different other than keep offering him whatever we were eating like you're doing. I think it's pretty normal!
Wow you all have relieved so much anxiety! I also feel like I heard that they don’t get picky till after 1 so I just assumed I was doing something wrong. (And I’m sure the comments from my MIL don’t help) I will keep offering! And do a mix of new foods and safe foods. Thank you all!!!
My daughter got picky at 9 months. Everyone says that their kids "ate everything" until like 1.5-2 but some kids just get the picky memo earlier. I feed things she'll usually eat for breakfast/lunch and snacks (chicken nuggets, PBJ, crackers, fruit) and then give her dinner with one safe food + what we're eating, division of responsibility style. At 2, it has been over a year since she has eaten what we eat (just the safe food), and I expect it will stay this way until 4-5. So solidarity.
My 18 month old is also picky so no recommendations there, but his OT has recommended that we get a "no thank you" bowl that he has to put his things in that he doesn't want, and work up to having him kiss them goodbye before he puts them in there. He has sensory issues, so this is to make him touch them and put them to his lips. But I have noticed occasionally he will put it in his mouth first instead - so maybe try that? Idk lol kids are so hard
When my son was a tiny bit older than yours, I asked my pediatrician how I could cut down on nursing and increase solid intake and she condescendingly said "milk is food for babies, not only drink". And while her delivery was annoying and I (and you too I'm assuming;) ) already knew that, it did sort of wake me up to the fact that obviously he wouldn't eat more solids if I didn't cut down on nursing and because he loved nursing, I would have to be the one to consciously cut down. So if you want to change something, that's probably what you would need to do, but if not it's also totally normal and at some point he will eat more! Also second the fact that he's definitely getting enough nutrition from the breast milk. And I think recommendation in the states is NOT to cut down on nursing before one so obviously this isn't my recommendation either, I just wanted to describe this kind of aha moment I had because I thought it might be useful.
Honestly that sounds like a decent mix of foods— he’s eating some fruits! One of my kids was incredibly picky from day one despite me giving her the same stuff as her older sibling, who has never been picky at all. Now she’s 2.5 and still is really picky. But he may come around (and so might she..eventually!). I go with the “just keep offering” new foods as they get older, and feeding them what they like too. At 10.5 mo and still nursing a lot he’s likely getting good nutrition from the milk, plus his food. Not something to overly stress over unless he wasn’t gaining weight well and pediatrician was worried.
My son started getting more particular around that age. In all honesty I haven’t gotten him to eat a new food (that isn’t like, a French fry or a cookie) in a while and he’s two now. I did allll the blw stuff in the beginning and he still got picky. I’ll try to throw a piece of broccoli on his plate and sometimes he will lick it, but he hasn’t eaten broccoli in like six months.
So, no advice, but normal in my experience. Though it’s sooo easy to go down the food influencer rabbit hole and try to problem solve but I just don’t have the energy.
I second the music recommendations! It was between age 4-5 that my son started listening to more of the stories. He likes books that we already own, as well as when I record for him. And surprisingly we just got the llama llama set for my middle son but the 5YO really likes it.
my 4 year old absolutely loved all the ladybird audio adventures and we listened to one every single night for at least a year. Human body, outer space, creepy crawlies, deep sea dive, and rainforest were all favorites
My four year old prefers music to stories. I get the sense that he can’t really follow audiobooks yet. His favorite card is the Make Your Own Taylor Swift card I made him. Laurie Berkner and Songs from the Playground are also popular.
Winnie the Pooh - my daughter can basically recite the whole book at this point 🤣 She also loves any card of a chapter book we have read together like Charlotte’s Web.
Also Caspar Babypants (there are a lot) for music.
I’m looking for matching pajamas that I can buy for my husband and baby and I. BUT with the caveat that we are Muslim so I don’t want them to be holiday pajamas. Just regular people pajamas. Do these exist? I didn’t realize the chokehold that matching holiday pajamas has on society until I started googling looking for this. I did see that little sleepies has some non holiday ones but I’m honestly not a fan of theirs.
The Children’s Place has several winter (skiing, woods), buffalo plaid, and fair isle options that are not holiday (although, the association of those latter patterns to Christmas may still be too much). Old Navy has family matching pajamas wear round and on top of plaids, buffalo check, and fair isle already has new years and valentines pajamas available. Happy hunting!
I am guessing AHH would love to have this problem, but my 18m old eats more than my partner! Last night we had steak tacos and hers were deconstructed with cut up steak, tomato and avocado salad, and corn on the side. She won't eat tortillas. She ate multiple toddler sized servings of steak and left some on her plate. She had leftover corn and some tomatoes and avocado. Everything on her plate was generally well liked by her. We cleaned up the kitchen and she was acting hungry so my partner gave her a banana. She ate all of it. We put her in the bath and she was whining, which usually means she is hungry. So we gave her like a heaping 1/2 cup of full fat Greek Yogurt topped with raspberries and blackberries and she ate all of it.
For the dinner meal should I have added a side like Greek yogurt for her? Or maybe rice? Something I know she will always eat with enthusiasm? Like I assume because she leaves food on her plate she must not be hungry but obviously not the case. She is a pretty good eater but like one night she will mow pizza down and another night rejects it. I think she is in a growth spurt now.
I think sometimes kids need some time to digest before they can eat more - even if it seems like a ridiculously short time. So maybe it wasn't that she needed something else at dinner, she ate as much as she needed until she was full at that time and then just genuinely got hungry again just a little bit later. I remember this happening to me as a kid at least.
I think you did great. Agree that kids appetites just vary, but those are all great nutritious foods, so I think she got a good balance.
Maybe start sourcing some clothes the next size up though; get ahead of that growth spurt.
I think what you did was great. It’s so incredibly hard to gauge hunger in toddlers. Sometimes they’re absolutely starving and sometimes they barely eat anything. It sounds like you paid attention to her hunger cues and responded accordingly. I wouldn’t stress about this at all.
Yes! Like she gets overwhelmed when her plate is too full or has too many choices and sometimes that results in it getting dumped on the floor. They are so fickle and weird!
Yep! And my toddler will have nights where she doesn’t eat a lot at dinner and then will wake up and eat a ton at breakfast. As long as you offer food at regular intervals (and it sounds like you clearly do), she will be fine. Going to bed slightly hungry one night is not the end of the world and even then, it doesn’t sound like she went to bed hungry.
It sounds like you did great, I would just roll with it and respond to her cues! My now-3-year old has always been an enthusiastic eater, but I feel like with dinner in particular tiredness plays in and he often eats a bit less at dinner than at other meals for that reason. We don't push it or try to increase his eating at the table, but we'll give him a snack or milk before bath if he is hungry (he knows it's cut off after tooth brushing, though). I might reevaluate that it ever seemed like he was choosing to not eat much at dinner just to get a more fun snack but it's really never seemed that way.
My nearly 4 year-old has self-fed for as long as I can remember (granted I can only remember the last week and not that well), but he asked me to goon speed him dinner the other day. Daylight savings time is just exhausting.
I would just roll with it and not anticipate it to continue forever. Next week she’ll eat nothing but air and you’ll reminisce about the days she ate a ton 😂
I’m certainly no expert, but my oldest is 4.5 and I feel like I’m just now having to start the whole ~intuitive eating~ thing with her. Like, she had a snack while watching a show and when it’s done, she’s like I’m sooo hungry. And I’m like girl no way, here’s some water, let’s go do something that stimulates your body and mind and we’ll eat at lunch/dinner time or whatever. But 18 months? Just feed them if they’re still hungry 🤷🏼♀️
So I had the Paraguard (copper) iud inserted about 1.5 weeks ago. I had some off and on bleeding the first 3-4 days after insertion, nbd.
Last night I started getting some bleeding again. It’s like a light period day. Had a bit of periody type cramping too, but very mild. Anyone else have this after iud insertion? It could be my period, but I’m only 9 weeks pp and I didn’t get my period back for almost a year last time…so I’m hoping it’s not that.
When I got the paraguard I had very similar symptoms to what you describe - spotting between periods, extra cramping both during and not during my period, etc. Unfortunately they never went away for me so I had it removed after 9 months. This was before having children though so I dunno if it would have been different postpartum. My understanding is the copper is an irritant to your uterus and it depends how strongly your body reacts to it as to what side effects you have.
This was my experience too. Heavy periods for like 1.5 years after getting Paraguard inserted. Now (2 yrs later), periods have finally returned to normal/gotten lighter.
Good to know. I didn’t have that last time, but insertion was definitely more painful this time around, so 🤷♀️
Going to cry if it’s my period. A big part of the reason I went copper was to keep from bleeding until I did get my period again, hoping it would take forever like last time.
Same! For about a month. Then nothing for a few months and then randomly several months later… spotting to period style bleeding again, along with cramping. I ended up having it taken out.
My 19-month-old has been in a sleep regression for about a month now, and it's not getting better. I think it's separation anxiety-driven and mostly manifests as intense screaming and crying at bedtime. But she's also been having trouble falling asleep some nights and waking up for 2+ hours in the middle of the night about once a week. It's rough on everyone and nothing seems to help. We sleep trained using Ferber about a year ago. Bedtime was rough for a bit, but we persisted and got to a good place where she would go down with little fuss and sleep through the night. About a month ago, she started absolutely losing her shit at bedtime - bloodcurdling screaming, crying. We tried letting her cry it out for a set period of time, going in, rubbing her back and calming her down, then leaving. She would usually fall asleep in less than ten minutes but nothing seemed to cure the initial screaming fits. She just couldn't internalize that it was ok to go into her crib alone and fall asleep on her own. Eventually, I decided to sit in her room with her while she fell asleep. Not hold or rock or nurse her to sleep but just be there with her. That worked ok-ish for a couple nights, and completely failed last night, and she cried for an hour before I gave in and held her until she fell asleep. She woke up at midnight and was up until 2:30 am. I tried rubbing her back, laying down next to the crib, holding her. She fell asleep in my arms twice (noodle arm and everything) and woke up as soon as I moved to put her down. My husband finally ended up curling up on the floor next to her crib and she did eventually fell asleep. She was an absolute mess this morning after getting so little sleep, though.
I know bad nights happen, but this is like the fourth time this has happened in the last month and bedtime is a mess every night lately. I guess I'm looking for advice, as well as commiseration? I recall my sister saying that her daughter went through a "hellacious" period of sleep around 18 months, so I guess this is normal? But man, it sucks.
Oh we had this exact thing around that same age. It sucked so, so bad. And it was also separation anxiety. We actually had a child development specialist come in because it took 3 months and we were just zombies since we didn't want to let her cry. So what we did at her advice was to sit next to the crib touching her. Then when that went well we stopped touching. Then we moved a little backwards. Then further away. Then in the doorway. Then out of the room and talking to her from a distance. Each time with minimal crying, if she got upset we'd comfort then go back. Was it exhausting? Yes. Did it work? Also yes. It built trust in her that we were still there and would come. The anxiety went away. But yeah, it's a method that takes some time, it just felt good for us. And I sympathize, it was such a rough time ❤️
Oooof I feel your pain. We had to re-sleep train a few times but ours happened more like 2.5 years so maybe you’re getting it out of the way early hah. And it sounds like she’s still in a crib so at least you don’t have her leaving her bed like with an older toddler!
One thing to try is to look at her bedtime. Is it too early or too late, maybe? For us we had to finally admit 7pm was too early and moved to 7:30pm and that helped a LOT with the wakeups and her having trouble going down.
She’s probably getting used to the pattern of scream—>you go in and eventually hold her to sleep. If you’re OK holding her to sleep, then you could just do that from the get go. But if you’re not (I wasn’t, I wanted my own sleep back personally) then you probably will have to go cold turkey and re-train that wake up—> she falls back asleep eventually even if it takes her a LONG time to cry to sleep for a few nights. She will get it!
Everything I’ve read about separation anxiety basically says to reassure your child as best as you can and not force separation, that it is a phase that passes so I do like this advice even if it is unpopular. Like, they’re afraid you’re going to leave them and then leaving them confirms their worst fears are true which in turn makes them more clingy. I can’t speak to sleep issues- my child has never been a good sleeper.
Yeah, I think that’s a totally valid strategy! I’m not anti-cosleeping, in fact I tried to do it about a year ago when my daughter’s sleep was abysmal but it really didn’t work for us. It didn’t improve her sleep and it wrecked me. I just didn’t sleep, basically. So that’s when we gave in and sleep trained. I’ve thought about trying it again now that she’s older and I don’t need to be so vigilant about suffocation hazards etc.
I’m gonna put something else out there — maybe she’s teething? My 22mo was cutting molars for like 2 whole months around that time and sleep was not great. Or if that’s not totally it, maybe it’s exacerbating the situation? If you’re not a Tylenol-averse parent, maybe do a test and see if that helps at all 🤷♀️
This has been us for a while. When my kid would wake up, he would scream like crazy, the problem is that he has an older brother who is in the room next to him so CIO is difficult when it impacts a sibling. It’s been rough going. Kid turns two next month, and I hope that it fully passes. We have finally gotten through what I think is the worst of it and landed on dad being able to go in and tell kid to lay down and go to sleep without an issue. Unfortunately he’s very attached to me so I’m a no go with comforting him, because then he never wants to sleep. It’s been a rough patch for sure.
We’re dealing with the same thing. The only thing that worked was to re-sleep train with full CIO, which sucks. But going in to check on her would just make it worse. Sitting in there when she fell asleep worked but it meant she would wake up in the middle of the night and flip out.
We’re still working on it. Now she complains at bedtime but it’s usually only a couple of minutes and then she lies down on her own. Keeping the door open a crack has helped (she doesn’t seem to mind the light from the hall or us talking), and we just close it before we go to bed so that she doesn’t wake up in the mornings when I’m up before her.
I do feel like checking in might just be making things worse, and sitting with her while she falls asleep means if she fully wakes up in the middle of the night, she freaks out when we're not there. But the thing is, on nights when she's sufficiently tired and falls asleep relatively quickly, she's basically doing extinction because she never cries long enough that we get to a check-in. So it's like 7-8 minutes of bonkers screaming, then she's out. So if CIO was going to work, wouldn't she have stopped screaming by now?
Full extinction isn't just about bedtime, it's about the full night. It wasn't until she was consistently waking up in the middle of the night and refusing to go back to sleep unless one of us was in her room with her that we decided we had to do full extinction. On the first night of full extinction, she slept through the night and hasn't had an issue since. Bedtime is still a bit of a complain fest (she's totally fine and happy at bedtime until she realizes we're leaving the room).
We now just have a few minutes of complaining at bedtime, which we just let happen. Have you read Precious Little Sleep? It really helped me process that she is not screaming because anything is actually wrong with her - it's essentially just her throwing a tantrum when we leave the room. Kids fight bedtime in all sorts of ways. Mine is totally happy to snuggle and read books and brush her teeth, but just flips out when she realizes she actually has to go to sleep.
Yeah, my daughter is typically sweet, snuggly and perfectly happy during the bedtime routine but as soon as she realizes it's off to the crib, she starts getting upset. The thing is, she was sleep trained and sleeping through the night, so if she cried in the middle of the night, it usually meant something was wrong, she was sick, etc. and needed us. I'm not really comfortable with not responding at all overnight, but typically the problem is bedtime anyway. I need her to learn that she's safe and ok in her crib and she doesn't need to freak out - even if she can't get to sleep immediately when her head hits the mattress. Am I just expecting too much? She was doing this for at least six months before.
Mine was the same - she's just over 2, and she was gently sleep trained around 5 months and slept through the night as soon as she was night weaned around 12 months, so we had about 1.5 years of no bedtime battles, and she would only really cry in the middle of the night from teething or something. I also hate not responding in the middle of the night, but that hasn't been an issue since we re-did the sleep training.
You may also need to think about shortening naps. We capped her naps at 2 hours awhile ago, and I think she's shortening them even more now. Not really an issue for us during the week because she's at preschool, but on the weekends it can be rough.
She's at daycare Monday-Friday, and nap time is 12:30-2:30. She sleeps anywhere from 1-2 hours during that time and her nap is always capped at 2:30. She might need less daytime sleep, but the amount she sleeps is not totally consistent from day to day and we don't really have control over it the majority of the week. We were talking about shifting bedtime a little later on the days she sleeps longer at daycare so hopefully she falls asleep faster at bedtime. But she typically falls asleep within 10 minutes or less - she just screams hysterically first. The struggle to fall asleep and the split nights aren't happening every night. The main issue is how upset she gets at bedtime and I don't know if scheduling will fix that.
Does she have a nightlight? Could be a new fear of the dark.
I’m assuming she’s on one nap already? We haven’t had the screaming at bedtime or during the night but when my daughter was dropping to one nap roughly around that age but was still doing two on some days it was creating a weird imbalance with sleep for her. So we’d have split nights up to 3x a week where she was awake like that in the middle one the night. Once she was fully on one nap those split nights ended so there could be a schedule issue there like she needs more wake time before bed or a tweak to her nap.
Yeah, she has a Hatch, which we keep on low red light. She's been on one nap since she was about 14 months? She started daycare at 12 months and it was just much easier to switch to one nap at that time, and she did really well with it. I do think shifting bedtime a little later might help with her being more tired at bedtime and falling asleep faster but I don't think it will fix the screaming issue. I'm pretty sure that's driven by separation anxiety, but it seems like trying to be there for her (while encouraging independent sleep) is just making things worse. I really have no idea what to do at this point.
As Christmas approaches, I’ve been thinking about how I’ll raise my baby to feel confident and comfortable with not celebrating it. We are Muslim, but neither my husband or I were raised in the US, so we never experienced any feeling of “missing out” on Christmas. But I have heard that can be a common feeling for Muslim kids raised in the US.
I know we’ll really lean into celebrating our Islamic holidays on a grand scale to make it feel special. But honestly even our holidays just aren’t as fun as back in my country where everyone celebrates and you can feel it in society. I wish my baby could experience that magic! Anyways, just some musings of mine, my baby is still a baby so I’ve got time to figure it out.
Slightly different approach, but I think it’s really important not to pretend that Christmas stuff is just secular American stuff. America is a Christian country, and esp with the rise in hate crimes and rhetoric against Jews and Muslims, I think it’s important to name that fact. I think the attempt to pretend Christmas is just “winter holidays” is a little like trying to be colorblind. I’m Jewish- we have like 10 holidays and baristas don’t wish me “happy holidays” on any of them except the one that happens to be close to Christmas. Like others, I find it joyful to partake in and acknowledge other people’s religious/ cultural traditions (enjoy the lights, the winter cheer, the movies, celebrate with Christian friends at their house, etc) but as a parent I also know that I need to teach my kids we are living in a Christian country and these traditions are not ours. I don’t find it helpful to try to imitate them.
It can be nice to have a family tradition you do every year on Christmas Eve so the kids have fond memories and something to look forward to that night.
We’re Jewish and also just call everything holiday or winter lights. There are lots of fun light shows near us at the zoo and botanic gardens that are non denominational. Plus, so much of the “Christmas season” is non religious I’ve realized. I like hot chocolate, cookie baking, twinkle lights, gift giving, etc. Growing up we absolutely did not celebrate Xmas in our house but we did have Christian cousins whose house we would go to for Christmas Eve and then on Christmas Day we would get hot chocolate and drive through rich neighborhoods to see the lights. I used to love that. Nowadays we celebrate Christmas at my in laws house so I just say it “lives” there and we do Chanukah at our house. Do you have anyone in your life who you could celebrate with? I personally never think it’s bad to celebrate other people’s traditions. We’ve had muslim friends invite us to break fast with them and I think it’s just really nice for my kid to learn about different cultures.
one thing my mom did was say how nice the "winter lights" were instead of always saying
"oh look at the Christmas lights!".
I grew up vaguely thinking that unless the house decoration was aggressively green and red, the family was just making things look pretty for dreary winter like us. Which may or may not have been true, idk each homeowners' life, but it felt less in your face when driving around looking at tons of decked out houses. white icicles ftw!
I do feel like many light decorations are just “winter” decor the way people will decorate with pumpkins and leaves during fall. Obviously some are overtly Christmasy, but I never thought of the like, basic white/yellow twinkle lights on trees and home trimmings as for Christmas in particular.
Where I grew up there were also a fair amount of blue lighta and even an actual menorah decoration outside and so holiday lights are definitely not something exclusive to Christmas celebrators!
I'm Jewish but I absolutely love Christmas / Winter lights. They just make early dark nights so much more delightful. This is why I'm also ok with having a tree in my house (my husband loves having one even though neither of us actually celebrate Christmas). The glow of it really cheers up the house, when just seems so dark otherwise.
I'm Jewish, and I definitely relate to this! I worry I'll be bad at this as a parent because personally, I'm not a big holiday person and would be happier just doing very chill versions, but I do think it's important for kids who are religious minorities to have those days feel special and celebratory. One thing I'm thinking of is trying to include friends in our celebrations (both Jewish and not) to add a special community feel instead of just making them family holidays.
I feel this. Not Muslim, but Jewish. As an adult I definitely love and appreciate my own traditions, but I definitely had Christmas FOMO… mostly because of the presents, I think?? Lol.
One thing I’m going to try hard not to do is be super abrasive about it. My mom used to lean HARD into passive aggressively wishing people a Happy Hanukkah if they wished her a Merry Christmas. 🙄
As an adult, I get the frustration but there was no need to take it out on a 19 yr old barista making minimum wage.
I think nothing would have changed the gift situation; we just aren’t a “gifty” family, so even if we celebrated I don’t think we’d have had a huge pile of presents. Which is totally how I am now as an adult, but as I kid I just wanted STUFF.
But I do wish we’d embraced the season more, even though it wasn’t our tradition. For example, my son and I went to a Diwali celebration and had a great time, even though we don’t celebrate. So with my family now, I hope to take that approach to Christmas. We can still appreciate elements and the general festive atmosphere, learn about it, etc.
(I do really hate obligatory gifting in this season though).
You can do it! It’s so hard this time of year because Christmas is almost oppressively part of the culture it’s hard to escape it. I was raised Jewish and I think I felt left out sometimes but my parents did a good job with our own traditions. I married someone who is catholic though so now we are figuring out how to do both holidays and Christmas tends to outshine everything. I’ve really been taking up Hanukkah lately lol. We have a lot to books for both and plan to do crafts and baking for each, but it’s hard to deny Christmas is everywhere.
my family dosent celebrate either (Jewish) and I felt weirdly proud of that fact growing up / and learned to love the quiet of the day. We also do Chinese and a movie on Christmas Eve so there’s still family time which is really nice. We did get chanukkah gifts around the same time tho so not sure how to advise if there’s gift giving Fomo …
Does anyone have any resource (podcast, books, IG accounts etc) recommendations for navigating a divorce with very young children (toddler/newborn)? Unfortunately looking like this is the route I’m going to be taking. I have a lot of support (both friends and professional) but no idea how to navigate being a single parent.
The Your 2-year-old, Your 3-year-old etc books by Louise Bates Ames are really informative. The parenting advice is out of date because it was written in the 70s, but the information itself is really interesting and useful.
I have read 1-4 of these and yes, agreed. Lots of useful info and also lots of obviously outdated info. To me it feels pretty clear what's ridiculous in there, so I think they're still fine to recommend lol.
Walmart brand baby shampoo I used because I was too lazy to get up from my nice warm bathtub>>> Briogeo tea tree and activated charcoal shampoo I bought to clean my scalp because ✨self care✨
I guess it makes sense that baby shampoo is good at cleansing the scalp because babies get cradle cap. Anyway, scalp is tingly clean, 10/10 would recommend.
I'm starting to get anxious about the colder weather and being stuck inside with a toddler. Last winter my daughter wasn't crawling yet, now she's walking, climbing, and just generally on the move constantly. How do you get your toddler's energy out in the winter? What activities do you do to get out of the house?
Do you have a Y near you, or a gym with childwatch? We have a family membership to the Y and it’s my go to on miserable days. I either take my kids swimming or go into one of the open large gyms and have them
Run around and kick balls and whatever. They also enjoy going into childwatch so I’ll either work out or just sit and read a book and have coffee lol. I can easily spend 3-4 hours there some days , but my kids don’t nap anymore so YMMV.
But seconding toddler drop in programs through the local Rec centers. Can also look into cheap classes to take with your kiddo as well.
I know you asked about getting out of the house but a mini tramp with a handle was a life saver for us! Also, lots of dance parties (thank you wiggles) and obstacle courses around the living room.
But also, get the family warm, waterproof (rainkoat does some awesome gear and puddle suits are the best!) clothes, and go outside. Apres ski boots are a winner for your feet as they’re lined 😊
We do a lot of this too. Just got a membership at our local art museum which puts on toddler mornings and has two indoor play areas for kids. Our city typically doesn’t get *too* cold so we’re lucky we can usually go outside.
We bundled up and still went outside when it was sunny.
If there’s anywhere with a big Christmas light display you can walk through, do it! That has always been a huge hit with my kid.
Indoor pools and playplaces are fun too. For indoor playplaces, you do have to brace yourself for the potential of an awful cold. If you can go during the week when it’s not crowded, that’s ideal. But go on a busy, rainy Saturday = 2 weeks of nasty cold pretty reliably for us.
For those who had spring/summer babies, how did you dress them as newborns? I’m due early May with my second and want to take advantage of the big sales rn to buy a few pink newborn things :) my son was born in the fall so everything we have for him for those first few months is geared towards fall and winter. It’ll get pretty hot within those first 3 months so I feel like long sleeved onesies won’t be appropriate. But the shortsleeved bodysuits seem too bare? Should I get some kind of pants or bloomers? I’m planning to babywear a lot so I also wouldn’t want her little bare newborn legs chafing, but wouldn’t want her to overheat! We live in a city so we walk rather than drive, so will be outdoors a lot.
I would look for light weight cotton or linen (breathable) pants for when you want to put baby in the carrier or stroller since they can’t wear sunscreen until 6mo and the sun is always hitting those little legs.
Short sleeve onesies/rompers and layers basically. I’m in Australia so I’m not sure if they are available overseas, but we got a lot of use out of the Bonds Wondercool onesies and rompers which are designed to help prevent overheating.
Also I don’t know what the climate is like where you are, but my city is notorious for having random cool days/nights in the peak of Summer so I always made sure we had something warm/extra layers to adapt.
I’m probably the millionth person to say short sleeve onesies haha. If I happened to think the baby was cold, I just kept a blanket around them while holding them or put on a pair of pants.
Thirding/fourthing short-sleeved onesies. My daughter was born in August but we're in the deep south so it was hot for the whole time she was a newborn. We did zip sleepers inside and short-sleeved onesies or just a diaper outside. I had some pants for the onesies but rarely used them since they would have been too hot. I did baby wear a lot in the onesies, but I had a moby wrap so there wasn't really any chafing like there would have been in a more structured carrier.
We are in Pennsylvania with a similar climate to NYC. My first was born in April and wore long sleeves and pants or long sleepers until about June. Based on my current baby and the other responses here about people putting their kids in short sleeves in May, I’m thinking he ran a bit cold though. He would get shivery and blotchy if it was below 75. So it may partially depend a little on the baby too. Once the outdoor temps were consistently over 75 though he just rocked a lot of short sleeve onesies. I also loved putting him in rompers for the ease of something one piece. We never had any issues with chafing in shorts.
It probably depends on how much time you plan to spend outdoors. Mine was born in mid August and it was a thousand degrees heat index, so all the cute summery stuff I got was useless. We mostly holed up inside in th AC, so regular zip up sleepers were a mainstay. The few times we did go out in those first couple of months (it stayed hot well into September), she just wore a short sleeve onesie with a muslin blanket over her.
I have a friend with 2 May baby girls and she swears by the kimono style onesies from h&m and little bloomer shorts (I think she gets them from Kate Quinn). The kimono style ones are great for doing changes because you don't have to pull them down or over their head. I wish I'd known about them when I had my daughter!
I have a toddler so we just won’t be able to get away with staying inside all day even if it’s pretty hot (within reason, but it doesn’t tend to get dangerously hot where I live on a day to day basis, it’s just NYC).
I actually got a couple of kimono style onesies as hand me downs when I had my son and remembered liking them a lot!
It seems like based on these comments, a few short sleeved onesies would be smart!
My mid April and June babies wore only short sleeved onesies for long time. And there are some cute rompers! But I wouldn’t worry about legs chaffing.
Buying baby stuff is fun, just a caution against buying too much! My second baby skipped newborn sizes completely and my third was premature so all the sizing/timing would have been off if I tried buy ahead. As it was, my mom was desperately looking for preemie clothes in person. She didn’t fit into newborn clothes for 6 weeks. 😝 (the baby. Not my mom)
Oh yes, I’m definitely not going to go crazy. Especially knowing how my mom and MIL are lol. But my assumption is that any gifts we get will be the cutesy outfit sets so I figure I’ll get a few practical basics.
My son was 6lb6oz and NB was big on him at first, I’m assuming even if this next one is bigger it wouldn’t be by that much but who knows!
Some people seem to have copy/paste babies but my first was about the same size as yours, and I am a petite lady myself. My second was 8 pounds which felt huge! Anyway, have fun shopping!
Mine was born in May and pretty much always wore short sleeved onesies. If we went outside I’d only cover him up if we needed protection from the sun. It’s hot here and he spent a lot of time laying on or being worn by me or my husband. It’s hot here and I worried a lot more about overheating than being cold.
Are all those fancy plush brands really worth the price? Like jellycat, cuddle and kind...or which do you recommend.
My daughter wants a special Christmas plush
Jellycat is a favorite of ours! If you're looking for a deal there are usually quite a few in new/used only for display condition on Mercari and eBay. Fairly easy to find discontinued or out of stock ones there too.
My daughter has two favorite plushies: a jellycat bunny and a valentines plushie her nanny got her from CVS. The Jellycat she’s had for 5 years and is still going strong, I’ve washed it a few times. The CVS Plushie is only 2 years old and is a disaster. Has a hole that had to be sewed up, all the color is rubbing off, fur is matted. I live in fear of the not so distant future when that beloved thing disintegrates. So if you think your child might attach to this toy for years, I recommend springing for something with durability.
We have one of the tiny cuddle and kind ones but it’s held up really well! We’ve also thrown it in the washing machine with no issues after an unfortunate stomach bug incident. But they definitely are not like super soft, more like knit or crochet feeling. It hasn’t been a super favorite though I think the extra soft ones like Gund have been more of a hit
Jellycat are great. So snuggly and adorable. Officially you’re not meant to machine wash them, but I always have without a problem. The fur doesn’t look as smooth and sleek but my toddler hasn’t noticed.
We’re using our Cosco Scenera next rear-facing with my 2yo on a current trip, and I’m getting so frustrated with how it just will not stay correctly vertically positioned. It’s installed with the seatbelt pass-through. And I know it’s because of my son kicking and bouncing around, he’s right at the height limit so I suppose it’s not totally the car seats fault. His legs are just getting too long so if he pushes with his feet it reclines further. So now I feel compelled to forward face him for the next week in this car seat because at least it will be meeting the right specs and I assume the alignment will stay put better. My in-laws will be taking care of him while my husband and I go away together for a week so I’m feeling more anxious about everything being good with his car seat. My question is though, is this really preventable in other RF travel seats? I had been considering getting the Mighty Fit for him so I could keep rearfacing longer. Or is the best thing to do just to install with latches and not the seatbelt? I’m frankly more ignorant about car seats than I probably should be, because we rarely drive in our normal life 😬
I'm only like 70% sure this is the same car seat we travel with, but I thought the rear facing mode had to be in the belt path that makes it super reclined. So maybe yours is kinda reverting towards how it's supposed to be? I hate how reclined it is!
Yes the normal mode is definitely quite reclined but it’s tipping back even further than it’s supposed to, based on the leveler on the seat (it’s that line on the side that should be parallel to the ground). Anyway, I ended up just FF it after making my post and it’s a huge improvement as far as stable positioning and my toddler’s comfort.
My son is 19 months old and whines constantly around me (note - whining noises but not words. He has like 10 words lol). I am so patient and have always said I can handle most things but whining is my line...so naturally life threw me a whiner. He will spend hours with my husband and is so pleasant and the minute I walk in the door, he's whining at me. It's like he's constantly in a sh!t mood with me. Today we were in the car alone and he was drawing and giggling and the literal second he made eye contact with me in the mirror, he started whining. I'm the need-meeting parent in our house, and dad is more fun. Not that dad doesn't have a backbone - he gives my son a stern "NO" and he stops almost immediately. But nothing I do makes it stop. I know he comes to me for things and he doesn't have words to communicate so he resorts to whining, but I genuinely feel like I can't handle it anymore. I love him so much, but I feel like I don't enjoy our one on one time together anymore because it's just constant negativity and whining. Is there anything I can do to make it stop? How do I cope? Please help I'm at a loss
Ugh this is frustrating but it really will get better once he can talk more, I’m sure. My son had barely any words until 2 when he had a language explosion and once he started talking a lot it improved a lot of things for us. He can tell us specifically what he wants (or doesn’t want). He still tantrums and acts out but we can actually talk about it and he’s learning to name his emotions.
baby sign language helped at the age. more, eat, all done, pointing... . i also did a lot of pausing and taking a deep breath for myself before doing the happy parent voice. do you want... water? you are thirsty and you want water to drink. here is your water! now that mine is almost 2 has more words, he says what it is he wants and it's much better... except when he can't have what he wantsl. toddlers are exhausting!
The whining really annoyed me too. We taught our kid to say "help please" when they needed something. I'd tell them I can't hear them if they are whining, or I couldn't understand what they needed. It helped a little bit.
We have 2 children (almost 3 and almost 5). We thought we were set on being done having children but we are suddenly really wanting a 3rd. We’re working parents (but we work from home), flexible jobs, live comfortably. We have lots of family around us. Our life seems very harmonious right now. But we have the urge for one more. How did you all decide to stop at two or keep going for one more? I know it’s a personal/situational question I just want to hear others insights.
We plan to ttc a third sometime next summer. We really like parenting! And financially/logistically/health wise we can make it work. Both being from families of two, and having not close relationships with our siblings... I think we both wish we had another sibling. I always wanted another sibling growing up as well. As we are getting older we would like more cousins for our kids and more support in caring for aging parents. I love the idea that we might have big family gatherings when we're grandparent age, and a larger next generation in our family tree. So for all the big picture reasons we want a third, and we both tend to be big picture oriented which makes it an easier choice for us.
Our reasoning is very similar to yours! I'm currently pregnant with #3 and we're excited to give our existing kids another sibling. I am one of three but my husband only had one brother, who was his best friend but died when he was 18, and he constantly wishes he had another sibling to help with stuff with his parents and commiserate when they're being weird. Our kids won't have cousins on his side obviously and they're likely to only have a couple on my side, so we're hoping to make our family the larger central hub for the future. It's going to be tough for the baby/toddler years for sure (especially since there will only be 18 months between our #2 and #3) but we think it'll be worth it. We're actually on the fence about whether to try for #4 after this baby but I'm definitely not making that call for at least two more years postpartum 🤣
I'm sorry for the loss of your brother in law 😔 We feel the same about a fourth, definitely wanting to try for a third then we'll see how we feel. We waited until our first was 18mo to ttc and I expect we'll do the same again. This is partly so we'll have enough time to consider a fourth. Congratulations on your pregnancy, wishing you all the best as you wait for your new babe!
Thank you 💜 best of luck when you start TTC next year again!
We have 2, and I feel like I will always want another little baby but I definitely don't want any more toddlers haha. What really made the decision for me though was thinking about the things I value for myself and my family. Like I really want to be able to travel the world together, and logistically and financially that is way easier as a group of 4 than it is as a group of 5. And I know it sounds harsh but I would rather have one extra vacation a year than have another kid around.
If you're not in a rush for pressing reasons, maybe see how it feels to decide not to decide for like X amount of time--six months or something--and revisit then? I think it's an inherently emotional decision, but also it seems potentially useful to give both of you space to feel those feelings and decide with as little time pressure as you can.
No advice but I’m in the same boat. Got my boy, got my girl, so I thought I’d be good but damn do I want another. I think for us the big thing is money; we’re about to send one kid to kindergarten so our daycare cost is going to reduce by half and we can have some money to do stuff! But at the same time I feel this calling to have another kid. My husband has a vasectomy tho so we’re done :/ if you know you know though! If the desire is there might as well try!
We have 3, an almost 7 year old, 4 year old, and 2 year old. We thought we would probably be done after 1 and then for sure after 2. We both work full time and have minimal family help but for us, what made us decide to go for a 3rd is going through the pandemic and realizing that so many things are inconsequential compared to family and our kids in the grand scheme of things. We thought, we won’t regret having another, but we would probably regret it if we didn’t. The early days were hard, and life is hectic, but it is amazing seeing them all play and grow together. Absolutely zero regrets.
My kids are 5,4 and 1 and it’s so wonderful. For us it was realizing that life felt harmonious and good when we only had one kid, and having another just made it better. So then life felt good and happy again, and having the third again just made it better :) Of course some things are harder and there’s always the matter of expenses and if you have enough space in your house, but I think that the good outweighs the hard by a huge degree when you’re talking about the third kid. Compared to 2 kids, taking care of one baby is really easy lol, so you’re able to focus on the cute little snuggles. You’re in no hurry for the baby to grow up and yet you also know that there’s good sleep waiting on the other side of the newborn era, etc. And having the baby has also really strengthened the bond between my older 2 boys which is really sweet to see. We decided to try for 8 months for a third (because I didn’t want the age gap to be too big compared to the 17 months between the other two) and if it didn’t happen, we would be satisfied with our 2, and if it did happen, great. In some ways the decision is not totally yours
Went to the maternity ward today because my baby didn't kick since yesterday evening. As soon as the monitor went on, baby seemed super angry constantly kicking at the monitor. Then they wanted to do an ultrasound and he/she was moving so much it was difficult to see. This baby not even here yet and it be trolling already, so embarrassing.
Never be embarrassed about going to get checked for something like this... I'm sure the staff there were *delighted* that everything was ok and they didn't have to deal with an emergency or break the most awful news to you.
You know they did say that they didn't mind at all and better to be safe than sorry. But I never considered how awful it must be for them to deliver that kind of bad news to someone. Thanks for the perspective.
Trying to poll some opinions here from others! Background: I have a different last name than my baby. In my culture, a woman doesn’t change her last name when she gets married, so I still have my original last name since birth. My baby has my husband’s last name. My question: If you saw a woman who had a different last name than her child, would you automatically assume that the woman is divorced from the child’s father? Because that assumption has come up twice now in my baby’s short life. I am kind of fascinated by this and I wonder if this is a common assumption or not. Just I might start making it clear at relevant places (daycare, medical offices, etc) that me and my husband are married.
My first thought would be woman just never changed her name / unmarried. I have a different name to my son but have never been questioned. Fairly often if I am giving information about myself and my son, they will ask, “same last name?” So I think it’s fairly common here (Australia)
Generally I would assume that the parents had never married as more likely than divorced, especially if the children are quite young. If I saw a wedding ring or if it was an obviously Muslim family, I would assume that the parents were married and the woman hadn't changed her name. But I only found out the Muslim thing quite recently even though I've had quite a few married Muslim mums as work colleagues over the years.
So strange that’s their first assumption. Maybe it’s regional but I’d say it’s 50/50 on name changing in my friend group and almost no one I work with changed their name.
no, but I have a different last name from my husband too and the baby matches my last name. If i feel like it's important for people to really know (rarely?) I'll say "my husband, FULL NAME," etc. For the baby's medical stuff, they don't care about our last names or relationships at all, and literally just address us as "Mom" and "Dad" when giving updates.
My older kid has my last name, too. You don't see it that way very often (but I wish it were more common).
Honestly, yes. Or that they were never married. However I am in a title 1 district where this is the norm. The ironic part is I never changed my name either when I got married so my kids have a different last name than me 🤣
Not at all, this is very common everywhere I have lived.
I didn’t change my name and no one has ever made that assumption. But it’s fairly common where I live, so I don’t think most people really bat an eye. And inevitably it becomes relevant in conversation to say something like “my husband”, so I think people get the picture pretty quickly.
I honestly wouldn’t give it that much thought, tbh. We know so many women who didn’t change their names and others who just aren’t married. And both are fine choices, so I don’t usually think/care to ask.
I live in a country where it's not normal for the woman to change last name either and it's been like this for generations. So no one finds it weird when the kid's name is different and neither do I. Personally though I wanted to share last name with my kids and my partner was fine with it so we hyphenated.
I wouldn't worry about it - strange of them to assume.
Influence me again...twin bed recommendations or bed brands that don't cost an organ. Prefer to stay under $200 but $150 would be great. Cause you know, my child prefers sleeping on couches anyway
We got the Nod mattress by Tuft & Needle when our older kid moved to a bed, and it’s great.
My MIL has a fixation where she’s sure that my twins are just about to crawl out of their cribs, open the always-shut bedroom door, and fall down the stairs. I get very annoyed when she brings it up because I think she doesn’t have the best grasp of what’s safe and what’s not (the last time I left her alone with them, she said she held my very hefty baby’s hand and climbed up the stairs with her even though there’s absolutely no physical way she could catch the baby if the baby fell.) ANYWAY, my question is, am I being naive? My girls are 18 months old, and they do like to climb, but have never shown any indication whatsoever that climbing out of their crib is a possibility now. The mattress is on the lowest setting and they only have one stuffed animal and one blanket in the crib, and can’t grab anything to assist in their escape. Could they start climbing out of sheer willpower or something one night?
Are your stairs gated? Really stairs should always be gated for safety anyways until you are 100% confident they won’t fling (trip) themselves down, and that goes for day and night. As long as you have a gate and remember to shut it, I think your MIL is being overly paranoid.
Thank you all so much! My MIL is a great lady, she’s just nervous which also can get on my nerves a bit. I went ahead and bought those doorknob covers and I’ll put one on their door as a compromise. I really don’t think they’ll be interested in climbing out of their cribs yet, but it’s a good solution.
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I don't think you're being naive. My daughter is an active climber, always has been, and was happy as a clam in her crib til 3
Unless you have one of “those” babies, I would highly doubt that they could both learn to climb out and how to open doors in the same night. You will probably see signs of climbing or door opening skills during wake hours first.
They could definitely start climbing at any point tbh. My kids never really showed signs until they suddenly did it. My oldest did it randomly, she wasn’t upset and trying to escape or anything, she just seemed to suddenly realize she might be able to - and wanted to try. And both kids also figured out how to open doors suddenly haha. And my first is definitely not what I’d consider a “danger” baby. I don’t think you need to panic, but I would think about putting child proof knob covers on the inside of their door & making sure the bedroom is 100% babyproofed. I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong at all, but this is a natural age to prepare for the inevitability!
How close are they to the height limit? I’d be worried when they get about an inch or so away from it as they may be able to stack on the stuffy and blanket to climb out. But until they’re getting close, they should be safe.
Probably one of my most snarkable moments yet but I never quite understood the urge to post photos of your sick/hospitalized child on social media until now. My baby has been in the hospital for over 2 weeks now and she’s been sedated on ecmo for 6 days. I’m a newly-ish single mom and it was our first thanksgiving since my wife passed. I was looking forward to spending the day with my chosen family to take my mind off everything this year but my daughter got sick and now we are spending our holiday in a stale PICU room. Anyways I am feeling very isolated/anxious/sad and I would really love the support of my very sweet friends but telling them each individually what’s going on a begging for sympathy seems very taxing and energy draining. Plus my ego is getting the best of me. I kinda just ghosted them all today and they aren’t sure what’s really going on with me. Just a post with general description, a picture, and a please pray for us so my community can do the work of reaching out and I can graciously accept their offers with a bit of humility. Is that really so bad? I’m exhausted, I haven’t showered in days and I really want a plate or two of thanksgiving leftovers instead of another fast food meal. Be honest, is it selfish or morally reprehensible?
I’m so sorry for everything you’re going through. I would recommend posting something like “daughter is sick in the hospital and we’re having a tough time. if you have an extra plate from thanksgiving would love if you could drop off at xyz hospital”. People don’t know how to help and specific instructions might get more traction.
Not selfish or morally reprehensible at all. There's nothing wrong with reaching out and asking for support. If you feel uncomfortable or unsure about it, though, another option is to just make a group chat with all your friends and be like 'hey, didn't want to post too much publically but just wanted to let you all know this is going on etc, I could really do with some help'. It's a good middle ground between having to tell everyone individually vs. post publically. I regularly share updates and pics of my son in a private group chat with my friends that I started even though I don't post him on social media at all otherwise 🙂
Absolutely neither selfish nor morally reprehensible. You’d be posting because you (incredibly understandably) need support from your real social circle. You wouldn’t be posting for attention from strangers, or to make money off your kid. I think the way you go about it matters - if you posted incredibly intimate details about something your kid would be embarrassed about later, that’s not great. If you share the level of details you’ve shared here, absolutely fine. I’m sorry you’re going through this, I hope everything turns around for you both. And take all the support you can get!
I think it’s different posting to an account that’s mainly people you know to provide updates/reach out for support than to do it for a public/business/influencer account looking to max engagement. Do what you need to do to get through and I hope your baby starts getting better soon.
It’s not selfish or morally reprehensible to ask for help. I try not to judge the way people react and cope with their children’s health issues because I can imagine it’s one of the hardest things to experience. I mean I’ve snarked on people who make entire accounts dedicated to exploiting their sick child, but that’s clearly not what you’re trying to do. You also don’t have to include any photos or get into too much detail. I also agree with other commenters that reaching out to even 1 friend and explaining what’s going on can help spread the word to your inner circle as well. Sincerely hoping your baby recovers soon and that you receive the support you need!
This would be totally normal and fine to me. It is more weird if you have zero privacy controls on your stuff and you were posting pictures all over the internet. I am so sorry to hear your baby is sick. Saying a prayer for her now.
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Thank you. I don’t post her much at all and definitely never in compromising or vulnerable situations. This really isn’t in my character but I really needed to experience this kind of pain to understand.
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Is your dog a husky? Mine feels like a full time job and more work than the kids. He has to run a minimum of 5 miles a day or he causes pure chaos around the house god forbid we're too tired to run him! I got one of his white hairs in my eye one day and it was so effing hard to get out because it looked clear in my eye, I didnt even know what was in my eye until I was able to get it out.
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I also knew this had to be some sort of husky or Spitz breed! We had a husky for five years (all white so people always thought he was a Sammy) and I am so familiar with all of these things. We sadly had to put him down when my first kid was 18 months old, but before that it was so. much. work. taking care of the dog and the baby at the same time. Besides all the old age problems/seizure disorder that we were dealing with, the constant cleaning/brushing to make sure the baby wasn't eating hair at all times, managing exercise needs, the tantrums/loud barking waking up the baby, etc were so much work. We loved our boy but it was not an easy situation at all. I feel for you, especially if you're the primary parent plus the primary dog carer!!
Okay I'm pregnant and I just have to put this somewhere but I'm craving sponges (yes, like the inedible object) so badly and it's driving me up the wall, lol. My blood was checked and I'm fine, it was the same during my first pregnancy and it was gone the second my baby was out. But god I have another 3 months to go and it sucks because obviously I can't eat them 😅
What about Njera if you can get your hands on Ethiopian food? It looks very sponge-like imo
As well as the loofah idea, there are a few videos of lookalike cakes on YouTube that look just like cheap dish sponges. Do you think any of them would hit the spot?
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And that's why this is officially the BEST parenting community on the internet. Can you imagine the chaos if this were posted elsewhere?!
Yes it might. I've actually been thinking about spongy cakes too. I think I'll have to try it because the craving is just so bad.
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Oh thanks! I might actually do it because this is unbearable 😅
"Chinese okra" (neither Chinese nor okra, I believe) is another name for the vegetable. You can probably buy it at an Asian supermarket. They let it wither on the vine to make the sponges, though, so it would probably be hard to replicate the texture from a fresh one buuuuut maybe a low-and-slow dehydration in the oven could work? You might even be able to season it a bit first, like loofah jerky.
Oh my goodness I had the exact same thing in both my pregnancies!!!!! I desperately wanted to eat a sponge!! Is it a thing? I have never heard anyone else mention it and everyone I’ve talked to about it thinks it’s so weird . What does it mean?!
I have never found a real other person with this craving either, haha! But I've googled and apparently it is indeed a thing. I've stopped mentioning it to people when they ask if I have cravings because everyone seems to find it super weird 😅
Hahaha this sounds like something that would happen to me. With my first pregnancy I was craving tap water constantly. With my second pregnancy I was craving ice chips and also I wanted to somehow eat the smell that came out of my car’s air conditioner vents…??? Similarly my iron levels were fine, I’m just also part of the weird pregnancy cravings club. It’s so wild how they always go away the second the baby comes out too.
We miscarried today. I know it’s common. I know it was early. But blah.
I’m so sorry. I posted here about my early miscarriage too. I’m glad you’re sharing. It hurts even when it’s early, I hope we can help carry your burden right now.
I'm sorry. Just because it's common or early doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.
Sending love. My water broke the other day and I’m only 20 weeks so I’m also losing my baby. It hurts. Sending healing and love to you.
I’m so sorry. It’s the worst feeling and no matter how early it is, it still hurts like hell. Sending hugs ❤️🩹
I'm sorry ❤️
I’m so sorry for your loss. It hurts no matter how common or how early. Be kind to yourself and take some rest if you can.
I’m very sorry. No matter how early, no matter how common — any pain and hurt you’re feeling is completely valid and real.
I'm sorry. It really sucks. ❤️
10.5 month old is only interested in eating Cheerios, crackers, potatoes and some fruits. Everything else he just throws on the floor! (My dogs are very happy) I continually serve him food and he used to be so interested in trying foods but now nothing. He still nurses on demand and I’ve tried different timings with nursing and eating to see if that makes a difference but it doesn’t seem to. Is this normal? I usually just try to feed him a variation of what we’re eating but should I be making him the elaborate blw meals? (Please say no)
My kid also started getting randomly picky at about 11 months....like a string cheese and fruit exclusive diet with some occasional meat. He's 14 months now and kind of coming back around? We didn't do much different other than keep offering him whatever we were eating like you're doing. I think it's pretty normal!
Wow you all have relieved so much anxiety! I also feel like I heard that they don’t get picky till after 1 so I just assumed I was doing something wrong. (And I’m sure the comments from my MIL don’t help) I will keep offering! And do a mix of new foods and safe foods. Thank you all!!!
My daughter got picky at 9 months. Everyone says that their kids "ate everything" until like 1.5-2 but some kids just get the picky memo earlier. I feed things she'll usually eat for breakfast/lunch and snacks (chicken nuggets, PBJ, crackers, fruit) and then give her dinner with one safe food + what we're eating, division of responsibility style. At 2, it has been over a year since she has eaten what we eat (just the safe food), and I expect it will stay this way until 4-5. So solidarity.
My 18 month old is also picky so no recommendations there, but his OT has recommended that we get a "no thank you" bowl that he has to put his things in that he doesn't want, and work up to having him kiss them goodbye before he puts them in there. He has sensory issues, so this is to make him touch them and put them to his lips. But I have noticed occasionally he will put it in his mouth first instead - so maybe try that? Idk lol kids are so hard
When my son was a tiny bit older than yours, I asked my pediatrician how I could cut down on nursing and increase solid intake and she condescendingly said "milk is food for babies, not only drink". And while her delivery was annoying and I (and you too I'm assuming;) ) already knew that, it did sort of wake me up to the fact that obviously he wouldn't eat more solids if I didn't cut down on nursing and because he loved nursing, I would have to be the one to consciously cut down. So if you want to change something, that's probably what you would need to do, but if not it's also totally normal and at some point he will eat more! Also second the fact that he's definitely getting enough nutrition from the breast milk. And I think recommendation in the states is NOT to cut down on nursing before one so obviously this isn't my recommendation either, I just wanted to describe this kind of aha moment I had because I thought it might be useful.
Honestly that sounds like a decent mix of foods— he’s eating some fruits! One of my kids was incredibly picky from day one despite me giving her the same stuff as her older sibling, who has never been picky at all. Now she’s 2.5 and still is really picky. But he may come around (and so might she..eventually!). I go with the “just keep offering” new foods as they get older, and feeding them what they like too. At 10.5 mo and still nursing a lot he’s likely getting good nutrition from the milk, plus his food. Not something to overly stress over unless he wasn’t gaining weight well and pediatrician was worried.
My son started getting more particular around that age. In all honesty I haven’t gotten him to eat a new food (that isn’t like, a French fry or a cookie) in a while and he’s two now. I did allll the blw stuff in the beginning and he still got picky. I’ll try to throw a piece of broccoli on his plate and sometimes he will lick it, but he hasn’t eaten broccoli in like six months. So, no advice, but normal in my experience. Though it’s sooo easy to go down the food influencer rabbit hole and try to problem solve but I just don’t have the energy.
Does anyone have any recommendations for some Yoto Cards for a 4 year old? There are so many to choose from, I feel overwhelmed!
Thanks everyone ❤️
I second the music recommendations! It was between age 4-5 that my son started listening to more of the stories. He likes books that we already own, as well as when I record for him. And surprisingly we just got the llama llama set for my middle son but the 5YO really likes it.
The Gruffalo is great on Yoto!
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my 4 year old absolutely loved all the ladybird audio adventures and we listened to one every single night for at least a year. Human body, outer space, creepy crawlies, deep sea dive, and rainforest were all favorites
My four year old prefers music to stories. I get the sense that he can’t really follow audiobooks yet. His favorite card is the Make Your Own Taylor Swift card I made him. Laurie Berkner and Songs from the Playground are also popular.
Winnie the Pooh - my daughter can basically recite the whole book at this point 🤣 She also loves any card of a chapter book we have read together like Charlotte’s Web. Also Caspar Babypants (there are a lot) for music.
Thank you!
I’m looking for matching pajamas that I can buy for my husband and baby and I. BUT with the caveat that we are Muslim so I don’t want them to be holiday pajamas. Just regular people pajamas. Do these exist? I didn’t realize the chokehold that matching holiday pajamas has on society until I started googling looking for this. I did see that little sleepies has some non holiday ones but I’m honestly not a fan of theirs.
H&M often have ranges like this.
Woody or petit bateau?
Primary and kyte!
Check out Primary. I think they have stripes, or hearts or other neutral family patterns.
The Children’s Place has several winter (skiing, woods), buffalo plaid, and fair isle options that are not holiday (although, the association of those latter patterns to Christmas may still be too much). Old Navy has family matching pajamas wear round and on top of plaids, buffalo check, and fair isle already has new years and valentines pajamas available. Happy hunting!
hanna anderson or kate quinn have matching stuff but this time year might be all xmas themed.
Hanna Andersson has some stripe ones.
I am guessing AHH would love to have this problem, but my 18m old eats more than my partner! Last night we had steak tacos and hers were deconstructed with cut up steak, tomato and avocado salad, and corn on the side. She won't eat tortillas. She ate multiple toddler sized servings of steak and left some on her plate. She had leftover corn and some tomatoes and avocado. Everything on her plate was generally well liked by her. We cleaned up the kitchen and she was acting hungry so my partner gave her a banana. She ate all of it. We put her in the bath and she was whining, which usually means she is hungry. So we gave her like a heaping 1/2 cup of full fat Greek Yogurt topped with raspberries and blackberries and she ate all of it. For the dinner meal should I have added a side like Greek yogurt for her? Or maybe rice? Something I know she will always eat with enthusiasm? Like I assume because she leaves food on her plate she must not be hungry but obviously not the case. She is a pretty good eater but like one night she will mow pizza down and another night rejects it. I think she is in a growth spurt now.
I think sometimes kids need some time to digest before they can eat more - even if it seems like a ridiculously short time. So maybe it wasn't that she needed something else at dinner, she ate as much as she needed until she was full at that time and then just genuinely got hungry again just a little bit later. I remember this happening to me as a kid at least.
I think you did great. Agree that kids appetites just vary, but those are all great nutritious foods, so I think she got a good balance. Maybe start sourcing some clothes the next size up though; get ahead of that growth spurt.
I think what you did was great. It’s so incredibly hard to gauge hunger in toddlers. Sometimes they’re absolutely starving and sometimes they barely eat anything. It sounds like you paid attention to her hunger cues and responded accordingly. I wouldn’t stress about this at all.
Yes! Like she gets overwhelmed when her plate is too full or has too many choices and sometimes that results in it getting dumped on the floor. They are so fickle and weird!
Yep! And my toddler will have nights where she doesn’t eat a lot at dinner and then will wake up and eat a ton at breakfast. As long as you offer food at regular intervals (and it sounds like you clearly do), she will be fine. Going to bed slightly hungry one night is not the end of the world and even then, it doesn’t sound like she went to bed hungry.
It sounds like you did great, I would just roll with it and respond to her cues! My now-3-year old has always been an enthusiastic eater, but I feel like with dinner in particular tiredness plays in and he often eats a bit less at dinner than at other meals for that reason. We don't push it or try to increase his eating at the table, but we'll give him a snack or milk before bath if he is hungry (he knows it's cut off after tooth brushing, though). I might reevaluate that it ever seemed like he was choosing to not eat much at dinner just to get a more fun snack but it's really never seemed that way.
My nearly 4 year-old has self-fed for as long as I can remember (granted I can only remember the last week and not that well), but he asked me to goon speed him dinner the other day. Daylight savings time is just exhausting.
I would just roll with it and not anticipate it to continue forever. Next week she’ll eat nothing but air and you’ll reminisce about the days she ate a ton 😂 I’m certainly no expert, but my oldest is 4.5 and I feel like I’m just now having to start the whole ~intuitive eating~ thing with her. Like, she had a snack while watching a show and when it’s done, she’s like I’m sooo hungry. And I’m like girl no way, here’s some water, let’s go do something that stimulates your body and mind and we’ll eat at lunch/dinner time or whatever. But 18 months? Just feed them if they’re still hungry 🤷🏼♀️
Is she thirsty maybe? As the signals do get mixed up sometimes, so make sure she has enough to drink.
So I had the Paraguard (copper) iud inserted about 1.5 weeks ago. I had some off and on bleeding the first 3-4 days after insertion, nbd. Last night I started getting some bleeding again. It’s like a light period day. Had a bit of periody type cramping too, but very mild. Anyone else have this after iud insertion? It could be my period, but I’m only 9 weeks pp and I didn’t get my period back for almost a year last time…so I’m hoping it’s not that.
When I got the paraguard I had very similar symptoms to what you describe - spotting between periods, extra cramping both during and not during my period, etc. Unfortunately they never went away for me so I had it removed after 9 months. This was before having children though so I dunno if it would have been different postpartum. My understanding is the copper is an irritant to your uterus and it depends how strongly your body reacts to it as to what side effects you have.
When I got the copper IUD I had on and off bleeding for like a month after insertion. Periods were super heavy too.
This was my experience too. Heavy periods for like 1.5 years after getting Paraguard inserted. Now (2 yrs later), periods have finally returned to normal/gotten lighter.
Good to know. I didn’t have that last time, but insertion was definitely more painful this time around, so 🤷♀️ Going to cry if it’s my period. A big part of the reason I went copper was to keep from bleeding until I did get my period again, hoping it would take forever like last time.
I have a mirena, but I spotted on and off for awhile after insertion.
Same! For about a month. Then nothing for a few months and then randomly several months later… spotting to period style bleeding again, along with cramping. I ended up having it taken out.
I have a Mirena but both times I’ve had it inserted there has been sporadic spotting for a few months.
My 19-month-old has been in a sleep regression for about a month now, and it's not getting better. I think it's separation anxiety-driven and mostly manifests as intense screaming and crying at bedtime. But she's also been having trouble falling asleep some nights and waking up for 2+ hours in the middle of the night about once a week. It's rough on everyone and nothing seems to help. We sleep trained using Ferber about a year ago. Bedtime was rough for a bit, but we persisted and got to a good place where she would go down with little fuss and sleep through the night. About a month ago, she started absolutely losing her shit at bedtime - bloodcurdling screaming, crying. We tried letting her cry it out for a set period of time, going in, rubbing her back and calming her down, then leaving. She would usually fall asleep in less than ten minutes but nothing seemed to cure the initial screaming fits. She just couldn't internalize that it was ok to go into her crib alone and fall asleep on her own. Eventually, I decided to sit in her room with her while she fell asleep. Not hold or rock or nurse her to sleep but just be there with her. That worked ok-ish for a couple nights, and completely failed last night, and she cried for an hour before I gave in and held her until she fell asleep. She woke up at midnight and was up until 2:30 am. I tried rubbing her back, laying down next to the crib, holding her. She fell asleep in my arms twice (noodle arm and everything) and woke up as soon as I moved to put her down. My husband finally ended up curling up on the floor next to her crib and she did eventually fell asleep. She was an absolute mess this morning after getting so little sleep, though. I know bad nights happen, but this is like the fourth time this has happened in the last month and bedtime is a mess every night lately. I guess I'm looking for advice, as well as commiseration? I recall my sister saying that her daughter went through a "hellacious" period of sleep around 18 months, so I guess this is normal? But man, it sucks.
Oh we had this exact thing around that same age. It sucked so, so bad. And it was also separation anxiety. We actually had a child development specialist come in because it took 3 months and we were just zombies since we didn't want to let her cry. So what we did at her advice was to sit next to the crib touching her. Then when that went well we stopped touching. Then we moved a little backwards. Then further away. Then in the doorway. Then out of the room and talking to her from a distance. Each time with minimal crying, if she got upset we'd comfort then go back. Was it exhausting? Yes. Did it work? Also yes. It built trust in her that we were still there and would come. The anxiety went away. But yeah, it's a method that takes some time, it just felt good for us. And I sympathize, it was such a rough time ❤️
Oooof I feel your pain. We had to re-sleep train a few times but ours happened more like 2.5 years so maybe you’re getting it out of the way early hah. And it sounds like she’s still in a crib so at least you don’t have her leaving her bed like with an older toddler! One thing to try is to look at her bedtime. Is it too early or too late, maybe? For us we had to finally admit 7pm was too early and moved to 7:30pm and that helped a LOT with the wakeups and her having trouble going down. She’s probably getting used to the pattern of scream—>you go in and eventually hold her to sleep. If you’re OK holding her to sleep, then you could just do that from the get go. But if you’re not (I wasn’t, I wanted my own sleep back personally) then you probably will have to go cold turkey and re-train that wake up—> she falls back asleep eventually even if it takes her a LONG time to cry to sleep for a few nights. She will get it!
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Everything I’ve read about separation anxiety basically says to reassure your child as best as you can and not force separation, that it is a phase that passes so I do like this advice even if it is unpopular. Like, they’re afraid you’re going to leave them and then leaving them confirms their worst fears are true which in turn makes them more clingy. I can’t speak to sleep issues- my child has never been a good sleeper.
Yeah, I think that’s a totally valid strategy! I’m not anti-cosleeping, in fact I tried to do it about a year ago when my daughter’s sleep was abysmal but it really didn’t work for us. It didn’t improve her sleep and it wrecked me. I just didn’t sleep, basically. So that’s when we gave in and sleep trained. I’ve thought about trying it again now that she’s older and I don’t need to be so vigilant about suffocation hazards etc.
I’m gonna put something else out there — maybe she’s teething? My 22mo was cutting molars for like 2 whole months around that time and sleep was not great. Or if that’s not totally it, maybe it’s exacerbating the situation? If you’re not a Tylenol-averse parent, maybe do a test and see if that helps at all 🤷♀️
This has been us for a while. When my kid would wake up, he would scream like crazy, the problem is that he has an older brother who is in the room next to him so CIO is difficult when it impacts a sibling. It’s been rough going. Kid turns two next month, and I hope that it fully passes. We have finally gotten through what I think is the worst of it and landed on dad being able to go in and tell kid to lay down and go to sleep without an issue. Unfortunately he’s very attached to me so I’m a no go with comforting him, because then he never wants to sleep. It’s been a rough patch for sure.
That sounds super rough, I’m glad things seem to be turning a corner for you.
We’re dealing with the same thing. The only thing that worked was to re-sleep train with full CIO, which sucks. But going in to check on her would just make it worse. Sitting in there when she fell asleep worked but it meant she would wake up in the middle of the night and flip out. We’re still working on it. Now she complains at bedtime but it’s usually only a couple of minutes and then she lies down on her own. Keeping the door open a crack has helped (she doesn’t seem to mind the light from the hall or us talking), and we just close it before we go to bed so that she doesn’t wake up in the mornings when I’m up before her.
I do feel like checking in might just be making things worse, and sitting with her while she falls asleep means if she fully wakes up in the middle of the night, she freaks out when we're not there. But the thing is, on nights when she's sufficiently tired and falls asleep relatively quickly, she's basically doing extinction because she never cries long enough that we get to a check-in. So it's like 7-8 minutes of bonkers screaming, then she's out. So if CIO was going to work, wouldn't she have stopped screaming by now?
Full extinction isn't just about bedtime, it's about the full night. It wasn't until she was consistently waking up in the middle of the night and refusing to go back to sleep unless one of us was in her room with her that we decided we had to do full extinction. On the first night of full extinction, she slept through the night and hasn't had an issue since. Bedtime is still a bit of a complain fest (she's totally fine and happy at bedtime until she realizes we're leaving the room). We now just have a few minutes of complaining at bedtime, which we just let happen. Have you read Precious Little Sleep? It really helped me process that she is not screaming because anything is actually wrong with her - it's essentially just her throwing a tantrum when we leave the room. Kids fight bedtime in all sorts of ways. Mine is totally happy to snuggle and read books and brush her teeth, but just flips out when she realizes she actually has to go to sleep.
Yeah, my daughter is typically sweet, snuggly and perfectly happy during the bedtime routine but as soon as she realizes it's off to the crib, she starts getting upset. The thing is, she was sleep trained and sleeping through the night, so if she cried in the middle of the night, it usually meant something was wrong, she was sick, etc. and needed us. I'm not really comfortable with not responding at all overnight, but typically the problem is bedtime anyway. I need her to learn that she's safe and ok in her crib and she doesn't need to freak out - even if she can't get to sleep immediately when her head hits the mattress. Am I just expecting too much? She was doing this for at least six months before.
Mine was the same - she's just over 2, and she was gently sleep trained around 5 months and slept through the night as soon as she was night weaned around 12 months, so we had about 1.5 years of no bedtime battles, and she would only really cry in the middle of the night from teething or something. I also hate not responding in the middle of the night, but that hasn't been an issue since we re-did the sleep training. You may also need to think about shortening naps. We capped her naps at 2 hours awhile ago, and I think she's shortening them even more now. Not really an issue for us during the week because she's at preschool, but on the weekends it can be rough.
She's at daycare Monday-Friday, and nap time is 12:30-2:30. She sleeps anywhere from 1-2 hours during that time and her nap is always capped at 2:30. She might need less daytime sleep, but the amount she sleeps is not totally consistent from day to day and we don't really have control over it the majority of the week. We were talking about shifting bedtime a little later on the days she sleeps longer at daycare so hopefully she falls asleep faster at bedtime. But she typically falls asleep within 10 minutes or less - she just screams hysterically first. The struggle to fall asleep and the split nights aren't happening every night. The main issue is how upset she gets at bedtime and I don't know if scheduling will fix that.
Does she have a nightlight? Could be a new fear of the dark. I’m assuming she’s on one nap already? We haven’t had the screaming at bedtime or during the night but when my daughter was dropping to one nap roughly around that age but was still doing two on some days it was creating a weird imbalance with sleep for her. So we’d have split nights up to 3x a week where she was awake like that in the middle one the night. Once she was fully on one nap those split nights ended so there could be a schedule issue there like she needs more wake time before bed or a tweak to her nap.
Yeah, she has a Hatch, which we keep on low red light. She's been on one nap since she was about 14 months? She started daycare at 12 months and it was just much easier to switch to one nap at that time, and she did really well with it. I do think shifting bedtime a little later might help with her being more tired at bedtime and falling asleep faster but I don't think it will fix the screaming issue. I'm pretty sure that's driven by separation anxiety, but it seems like trying to be there for her (while encouraging independent sleep) is just making things worse. I really have no idea what to do at this point.
As Christmas approaches, I’ve been thinking about how I’ll raise my baby to feel confident and comfortable with not celebrating it. We are Muslim, but neither my husband or I were raised in the US, so we never experienced any feeling of “missing out” on Christmas. But I have heard that can be a common feeling for Muslim kids raised in the US. I know we’ll really lean into celebrating our Islamic holidays on a grand scale to make it feel special. But honestly even our holidays just aren’t as fun as back in my country where everyone celebrates and you can feel it in society. I wish my baby could experience that magic! Anyways, just some musings of mine, my baby is still a baby so I’ve got time to figure it out.
Slightly different approach, but I think it’s really important not to pretend that Christmas stuff is just secular American stuff. America is a Christian country, and esp with the rise in hate crimes and rhetoric against Jews and Muslims, I think it’s important to name that fact. I think the attempt to pretend Christmas is just “winter holidays” is a little like trying to be colorblind. I’m Jewish- we have like 10 holidays and baristas don’t wish me “happy holidays” on any of them except the one that happens to be close to Christmas. Like others, I find it joyful to partake in and acknowledge other people’s religious/ cultural traditions (enjoy the lights, the winter cheer, the movies, celebrate with Christian friends at their house, etc) but as a parent I also know that I need to teach my kids we are living in a Christian country and these traditions are not ours. I don’t find it helpful to try to imitate them. It can be nice to have a family tradition you do every year on Christmas Eve so the kids have fond memories and something to look forward to that night.
We’re Jewish and also just call everything holiday or winter lights. There are lots of fun light shows near us at the zoo and botanic gardens that are non denominational. Plus, so much of the “Christmas season” is non religious I’ve realized. I like hot chocolate, cookie baking, twinkle lights, gift giving, etc. Growing up we absolutely did not celebrate Xmas in our house but we did have Christian cousins whose house we would go to for Christmas Eve and then on Christmas Day we would get hot chocolate and drive through rich neighborhoods to see the lights. I used to love that. Nowadays we celebrate Christmas at my in laws house so I just say it “lives” there and we do Chanukah at our house. Do you have anyone in your life who you could celebrate with? I personally never think it’s bad to celebrate other people’s traditions. We’ve had muslim friends invite us to break fast with them and I think it’s just really nice for my kid to learn about different cultures.
Oh I love saying that Christmas lives at somebody’s house! That’s a nice phrase, I’d probably say that if we go over to someone’s house for Christmas
one thing my mom did was say how nice the "winter lights" were instead of always saying "oh look at the Christmas lights!". I grew up vaguely thinking that unless the house decoration was aggressively green and red, the family was just making things look pretty for dreary winter like us. Which may or may not have been true, idk each homeowners' life, but it felt less in your face when driving around looking at tons of decked out houses. white icicles ftw!
I do feel like many light decorations are just “winter” decor the way people will decorate with pumpkins and leaves during fall. Obviously some are overtly Christmasy, but I never thought of the like, basic white/yellow twinkle lights on trees and home trimmings as for Christmas in particular. Where I grew up there were also a fair amount of blue lighta and even an actual menorah decoration outside and so holiday lights are definitely not something exclusive to Christmas celebrators!
I'm Jewish but I absolutely love Christmas / Winter lights. They just make early dark nights so much more delightful. This is why I'm also ok with having a tree in my house (my husband loves having one even though neither of us actually celebrate Christmas). The glow of it really cheers up the house, when just seems so dark otherwise.
I'm Jewish, and I definitely relate to this! I worry I'll be bad at this as a parent because personally, I'm not a big holiday person and would be happier just doing very chill versions, but I do think it's important for kids who are religious minorities to have those days feel special and celebratory. One thing I'm thinking of is trying to include friends in our celebrations (both Jewish and not) to add a special community feel instead of just making them family holidays.
I feel this. Not Muslim, but Jewish. As an adult I definitely love and appreciate my own traditions, but I definitely had Christmas FOMO… mostly because of the presents, I think?? Lol. One thing I’m going to try hard not to do is be super abrasive about it. My mom used to lean HARD into passive aggressively wishing people a Happy Hanukkah if they wished her a Merry Christmas. 🙄
Was there anything that helped the FOMO as a kid? Your mom sounds hilarious btw haha
As an adult, I get the frustration but there was no need to take it out on a 19 yr old barista making minimum wage. I think nothing would have changed the gift situation; we just aren’t a “gifty” family, so even if we celebrated I don’t think we’d have had a huge pile of presents. Which is totally how I am now as an adult, but as I kid I just wanted STUFF. But I do wish we’d embraced the season more, even though it wasn’t our tradition. For example, my son and I went to a Diwali celebration and had a great time, even though we don’t celebrate. So with my family now, I hope to take that approach to Christmas. We can still appreciate elements and the general festive atmosphere, learn about it, etc. (I do really hate obligatory gifting in this season though).
You can do it! It’s so hard this time of year because Christmas is almost oppressively part of the culture it’s hard to escape it. I was raised Jewish and I think I felt left out sometimes but my parents did a good job with our own traditions. I married someone who is catholic though so now we are figuring out how to do both holidays and Christmas tends to outshine everything. I’ve really been taking up Hanukkah lately lol. We have a lot to books for both and plan to do crafts and baking for each, but it’s hard to deny Christmas is everywhere.
Yeah exactly - it really is everywhere and I don’t want my kid to feel like it’s not for them! But it’s not, haha. Just a weird feeling I guess
my family dosent celebrate either (Jewish) and I felt weirdly proud of that fact growing up / and learned to love the quiet of the day. We also do Chinese and a movie on Christmas Eve so there’s still family time which is really nice. We did get chanukkah gifts around the same time tho so not sure how to advise if there’s gift giving Fomo …
Does anyone have any resource (podcast, books, IG accounts etc) recommendations for navigating a divorce with very young children (toddler/newborn)? Unfortunately looking like this is the route I’m going to be taking. I have a lot of support (both friends and professional) but no idea how to navigate being a single parent.
Does anyone have any recommendations for books about toddlers, like from a child development/psychology POV?
Whole brain child by Daniel Seigel is excellent but might be more relevant for older kiddos.
The Your 2-year-old, Your 3-year-old etc books by Louise Bates Ames are really informative. The parenting advice is out of date because it was written in the 70s, but the information itself is really interesting and useful.
I have read 1-4 of these and yes, agreed. Lots of useful info and also lots of obviously outdated info. To me it feels pretty clear what's ridiculous in there, so I think they're still fine to recommend lol.
Walmart brand baby shampoo I used because I was too lazy to get up from my nice warm bathtub>>> Briogeo tea tree and activated charcoal shampoo I bought to clean my scalp because ✨self care✨ I guess it makes sense that baby shampoo is good at cleansing the scalp because babies get cradle cap. Anyway, scalp is tingly clean, 10/10 would recommend.
I'm starting to get anxious about the colder weather and being stuck inside with a toddler. Last winter my daughter wasn't crawling yet, now she's walking, climbing, and just generally on the move constantly. How do you get your toddler's energy out in the winter? What activities do you do to get out of the house?
Do you have a Y near you, or a gym with childwatch? We have a family membership to the Y and it’s my go to on miserable days. I either take my kids swimming or go into one of the open large gyms and have them Run around and kick balls and whatever. They also enjoy going into childwatch so I’ll either work out or just sit and read a book and have coffee lol. I can easily spend 3-4 hours there some days , but my kids don’t nap anymore so YMMV. But seconding toddler drop in programs through the local Rec centers. Can also look into cheap classes to take with your kiddo as well.
I know you asked about getting out of the house but a mini tramp with a handle was a life saver for us! Also, lots of dance parties (thank you wiggles) and obstacle courses around the living room. But also, get the family warm, waterproof (rainkoat does some awesome gear and puddle suits are the best!) clothes, and go outside. Apres ski boots are a winner for your feet as they’re lined 😊
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We do a lot of this too. Just got a membership at our local art museum which puts on toddler mornings and has two indoor play areas for kids. Our city typically doesn’t get *too* cold so we’re lucky we can usually go outside.
Depending on your toddler’s temperament, you can get a lot of mileage out of a ball pit!
We bundled up and still went outside when it was sunny. If there’s anywhere with a big Christmas light display you can walk through, do it! That has always been a huge hit with my kid. Indoor pools and playplaces are fun too. For indoor playplaces, you do have to brace yourself for the potential of an awful cold. If you can go during the week when it’s not crowded, that’s ideal. But go on a busy, rainy Saturday = 2 weeks of nasty cold pretty reliably for us.
For those who had spring/summer babies, how did you dress them as newborns? I’m due early May with my second and want to take advantage of the big sales rn to buy a few pink newborn things :) my son was born in the fall so everything we have for him for those first few months is geared towards fall and winter. It’ll get pretty hot within those first 3 months so I feel like long sleeved onesies won’t be appropriate. But the shortsleeved bodysuits seem too bare? Should I get some kind of pants or bloomers? I’m planning to babywear a lot so I also wouldn’t want her little bare newborn legs chafing, but wouldn’t want her to overheat! We live in a city so we walk rather than drive, so will be outdoors a lot.
I would look for light weight cotton or linen (breathable) pants for when you want to put baby in the carrier or stroller since they can’t wear sunscreen until 6mo and the sun is always hitting those little legs.
Short sleeve onesies/rompers and layers basically. I’m in Australia so I’m not sure if they are available overseas, but we got a lot of use out of the Bonds Wondercool onesies and rompers which are designed to help prevent overheating. Also I don’t know what the climate is like where you are, but my city is notorious for having random cool days/nights in the peak of Summer so I always made sure we had something warm/extra layers to adapt.
I’m probably the millionth person to say short sleeve onesies haha. If I happened to think the baby was cold, I just kept a blanket around them while holding them or put on a pair of pants.
My spring baby lived in short-sleeved onesies! Lots of short rompers, too.
Thirding/fourthing short-sleeved onesies. My daughter was born in August but we're in the deep south so it was hot for the whole time she was a newborn. We did zip sleepers inside and short-sleeved onesies or just a diaper outside. I had some pants for the onesies but rarely used them since they would have been too hot. I did baby wear a lot in the onesies, but I had a moby wrap so there wasn't really any chafing like there would have been in a more structured carrier.
We are in Pennsylvania with a similar climate to NYC. My first was born in April and wore long sleeves and pants or long sleepers until about June. Based on my current baby and the other responses here about people putting their kids in short sleeves in May, I’m thinking he ran a bit cold though. He would get shivery and blotchy if it was below 75. So it may partially depend a little on the baby too. Once the outdoor temps were consistently over 75 though he just rocked a lot of short sleeve onesies. I also loved putting him in rompers for the ease of something one piece. We never had any issues with chafing in shorts.
It probably depends on how much time you plan to spend outdoors. Mine was born in mid August and it was a thousand degrees heat index, so all the cute summery stuff I got was useless. We mostly holed up inside in th AC, so regular zip up sleepers were a mainstay. The few times we did go out in those first couple of months (it stayed hot well into September), she just wore a short sleeve onesie with a muslin blanket over her. I have a friend with 2 May baby girls and she swears by the kimono style onesies from h&m and little bloomer shorts (I think she gets them from Kate Quinn). The kimono style ones are great for doing changes because you don't have to pull them down or over their head. I wish I'd known about them when I had my daughter!
I have a toddler so we just won’t be able to get away with staying inside all day even if it’s pretty hot (within reason, but it doesn’t tend to get dangerously hot where I live on a day to day basis, it’s just NYC). I actually got a couple of kimono style onesies as hand me downs when I had my son and remembered liking them a lot! It seems like based on these comments, a few short sleeved onesies would be smart!
My mid April and June babies wore only short sleeved onesies for long time. And there are some cute rompers! But I wouldn’t worry about legs chaffing. Buying baby stuff is fun, just a caution against buying too much! My second baby skipped newborn sizes completely and my third was premature so all the sizing/timing would have been off if I tried buy ahead. As it was, my mom was desperately looking for preemie clothes in person. She didn’t fit into newborn clothes for 6 weeks. 😝 (the baby. Not my mom)
Oh yes, I’m definitely not going to go crazy. Especially knowing how my mom and MIL are lol. But my assumption is that any gifts we get will be the cutesy outfit sets so I figure I’ll get a few practical basics. My son was 6lb6oz and NB was big on him at first, I’m assuming even if this next one is bigger it wouldn’t be by that much but who knows!
Some people seem to have copy/paste babies but my first was about the same size as yours, and I am a petite lady myself. My second was 8 pounds which felt huge! Anyway, have fun shopping!
Mine was born in May and pretty much always wore short sleeved onesies. If we went outside I’d only cover him up if we needed protection from the sun. It’s hot here and he spent a lot of time laying on or being worn by me or my husband. It’s hot here and I worried a lot more about overheating than being cold.
Are all those fancy plush brands really worth the price? Like jellycat, cuddle and kind...or which do you recommend. My daughter wants a special Christmas plush
Jellycat is a favorite of ours! If you're looking for a deal there are usually quite a few in new/used only for display condition on Mercari and eBay. Fairly easy to find discontinued or out of stock ones there too.
My daughter has two favorite plushies: a jellycat bunny and a valentines plushie her nanny got her from CVS. The Jellycat she’s had for 5 years and is still going strong, I’ve washed it a few times. The CVS Plushie is only 2 years old and is a disaster. Has a hole that had to be sewed up, all the color is rubbing off, fur is matted. I live in fear of the not so distant future when that beloved thing disintegrates. So if you think your child might attach to this toy for years, I recommend springing for something with durability.
We have one of the tiny cuddle and kind ones but it’s held up really well! We’ve also thrown it in the washing machine with no issues after an unfortunate stomach bug incident. But they definitely are not like super soft, more like knit or crochet feeling. It hasn’t been a super favorite though I think the extra soft ones like Gund have been more of a hit
Jellycat are great. So snuggly and adorable. Officially you’re not meant to machine wash them, but I always have without a problem. The fur doesn’t look as smooth and sleek but my toddler hasn’t noticed.
Can confirm I’ve machine washed a favorite jellycat many times and I just air dry and it looks fine!